When just the substituting osier lithe For brittle bulrush, sound wood for soft withe, To further loam-and-roughcast-work a stage,-- Exacts an architect, exacts an age: No tables of the Mauritanian tree For men whose maple log 's their luxury! That way was Rome built. "Better" (say you) "merge At once all workmen in the demiurge, All epochs in a lifetime, every task In one!" So should the sudden city bask I' the day--while those we'd feast there, want the knack Of keeping fresh-chalked gowns from speck and brack, Distinguish not rare peacock from vile swan, Nor Mareotic juice from Cæcuban. "Enough of Rome! 'T was happy to conceive Rome on a sudden, nor shall fate bereave Me of that credit: for the rest, her spite Is an old story--serves my folly right By adding yet another to the dull List of abortions--things proved beautiful Could they be done, Sordello cannot do." He sat upon the terrace, plucked and threw The powdery aloe-cusps away, saw shift Rome's walls, and drop arch after arch, and drift Mist-like afar those pillars of all stripe, Mounds of all majesty. "Thou archetype, Last of my dreams and loveliest, depart!" And then a low voice wound into his heart: "Sordello!" (low as some old Pythoness Conceding to a Lydian King's distress The cause of his long error--one mistake Of her past oracle) "Sordello, wake! God has conceded two sights to a man-- [Sidenote: And a man can do but a man's portion.] One, of men's whole work, time's completed plan, The other, of the minute's work, man's first Step to the plan's completeness: what's dispersed Save hope of that supreme step which, descried Earliest, was meant still to remain untried Only to give you heart to take your own Step, and there stay--leaving the rest alone? Where is the vanity? Why count as one The first step, with the last step? What is gone Except Rome's aëry magnificence, That last step you'd take first?--an evidence You were God: be man now! Let those glances fall! The basis, the beginning step of all, Which proves you just a man--is that gone too? Pity to disconcert one versed as you In fate's ill-nature! but its full extent Eludes Sordello, even: the veil rent, Read the black writing--that collective man Outstrips the individual! Who began [Sidenote: The last of each series of workmen] The acknowledged greatnesses? Ay, your own art Shall serve us: put the poet's mimes apart-- Close with the poet's self, and lo, a dim Yet too plain form divides itself from him! Alcamo's song enmeshes the lulled Isle, Woven into the echoes left erewhile By Nina, one soft web of song: no more Turning his name, then, flower-like o'er and o'er! An elder poet in the younger's place; Nina's the strength, but Alcamo's the grace: